Thursday, April 8, 2010

The Media Has Converged

It is communication week at Vol State and Ed Bourn, Online and Technology Director of the “Chattanooga Times Free Press” newspaper addressed some of the issues of media convergence.

Bourn started as a graphic artist, and has managed over 250 newspaper and community sites.

“Last year we were named 22 as far as print and online growth,” said Bourn of the “Chattanooga Times Free Press.”

Bourn discussed social networking and listed the reasons to use it for your business. "It’s a trend," "it’s free," and "it can raise awareness of your business," were some of the reasons for having a Facebook or Twitter account as two of the growing social network sites.

“It’s an amazing trend.We use Twitter as more of a news feed about something.Facebook is more of a commentary.As a media outlet MySpace isn’t really important anymore,” said Bourn.

Bourn told of different ways the “Chattanooga Free Press” website promotes the newspaper and Chattanooga such as the contest “Chattanooga’s Most Eligible Bachelor” which resulted in plenty of web traffic.

Bourn gives this advice for students going into the communications business.“Have a drive and passion for the business.The ability to learn on the fly, being prepared, and never saying no are some of the qualities that are important,” he said.

“I wish I had had an internship or had a stint at broadcasting to give me an idea of how it works,” said Bourn when asked if he would have done anything differently when starting out.“Being with mostly a digital background, I could easily go to any medium,” he added.

“I’ve been really impressed with the newspaper and the facilities,” Bourn said of his experience at Vol State.

Howard Espravnik, Associate Professor of Communication, manager , WVCP 88.5 FM said, “I thought it would be interesting to see what he had to say.Newspapers as well as other traditional media are having to change their business models in light of the new media, and I wanted to see how his company had to go about it.”

Bourn showed the following clip titled “Did You Know” to give you an idea of how social networking and media convergence are affecting us today.